The Papers of Robert Ader, Ph.D.

Introduction

Robert Ader, Ph.D. (1932-2011) was a member of the faculty of the Dept. of Psychiatry at the University of Rochester School of Medicine for fifty-five years. A pioneer in the field of psychoneuroimmunology, Ader was internationally recognized for work establishing the influence of the brain on the immune system. The Ader papers were transferred to the Rare Books & Manuscripts Section of the Edward G. Miner Library in January 2012. Processing the collection was completed in July 2012. The Papers of Robert Ader, Ph.D. are contained in forty-nine boxes occupying twenty-six linear feet.

Biography

Robert Ader was born in the Bronx on 20 February 1932, the elder of Nathan and Mae Ader’s two sons. He attended the Horace Mann School in the Bronx, and in 1949 entered Tulane University, from which he graduated in 1953 with a B.S. in psychology. Immediately entering the graduate program at Cornell University, Ader earned a Ph.D. in psychology in 1957. That same year he was hired as a part-time instructor in the Dept. of Psychology at the University of Rochester, and part-time instructor in the Dept. of Psychiatry at the University of Rochester School of Medicine & Dentistry. Both John Romano, M.D., the chairman of Psychiatry, and George L. Engel, M.D., an internist focused on psychosomatic medicine, were interested in adding to the faculty an experimental psychologist who could conduct psychobiological research with animals. In an autobiographical essay published in 1998, Ader wrote that he “remained in Rochester because George Engel and John Romano provided the encouragement and the means that enabled me to develop my own program of research in psychosomatic medicine.” Ader was appointed Professor of Psychiatry & Psychology in 1968, and George L. Engel Professor of Psychosocial Medicine in 1983. Within the Dept. of Psychiatry, he was director of the Division of Behavioral Medicine (1982), and director of the Center for Psychoneuroimmunology Research (1993).

Robert Ader’s name will always be associated with psychoneuroimmunology, a term he coined in his 1980 presidential address to the American Psychosomatic Society, and which was used a year later as the title for a collection of essays signalling the emergence of the new field. As early as the 1950s, Ader’s research had touched on the relation of emotion to susceptibility to disease – particularly to gastric lesions in rats. Ader’s entry into what would later be termed psychoneuroimmunology, neuroimmunomodulation, psychoimmunology, etc. – was serendiptious. In the 1998 essay quoted earlier he wrote:

“The study of interactions among behavioral, neural and endocrine, and immunological processes of adaptation, became a ‘second’ research career in the 1970s – and came about by accident. Some animals died during a study of taste aversion learning in which rats were reexposed to a flavored drinking solution previously paired with the immunosuppressive drug, cyclophosphamide. And, like the magnitude of the conditioned avoidance response, mortality varied directly with the volume of flavored solution consumed on the single drug trial. As a psychologist, I was unaware that there were no known connections between the brain and the immune system. Therefore, free to make up any story I wanted, I hypothesized that, in the course of conditioning the behavioral response, we were also conditioning the immunosuppresive effects of cyclophosphamide. Thus, it was the serendipitous observaton of mortality – and the need to explain an orderly relationship between mortality and a conditioned aversive response – that gave rise to the hypothesis that immune responses could be modified by classical conditioning.”

Ader’s collaboration with Nicholas Cohen, an immunologist in the Dept. of Microbiology, was central to experimentally establishing this connection. Their first major statement on the subject appeared in an article published in Psychosomatic medicine in 1975 entitled “Behaviorally conditioned immunosuppression.” The authors posited that “the immune system, like other physiological processes, was subject to classical (Pavlovian) conditioning” and provided “dramatic evidence of an inextricable relationship between the brain and the immune system.” The reception of this theory was greeted with scepticism in some quarters, with guarded interest in others, and great enthusiasm in others still. Apart from studies on the classical conditioning of immune responses published in Russia during the 1920s – work unknown outside Russia – no previous discussion of a connection between the brain and the immune system had been undertaken.

From the mid-1970s, psychoneuroimmunology remained the principal focus of Ader’s research and publishing activity. A pioneer in a field of study that was initially greeted with scepticism, Ader’s collaboration with such figures as Nicholas Cohen and Jan Moynihan, their meticulous research, and cogent arguments were central to establishing the nervous system's influence on the immune system. Ader authored or co-authored more than two hundred journal articles and book chapters, founded and edited for many years the periodical Brain, behavior and immunity, and served on the editorial boards of half a dozen other psychobiology and behavioral journals. He was elected president of the American Psychosomatic Society (1979-80), president of the International Society for Developmental Psychobiology (1981-82), president of the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research (1984-85), and president of the Psychoneuroimmunology Research Society (1993), of which he was also a founder. Robert Ader retired in July 2011 and died in Pittsford, N.Y., a suburb of Rochester, on 20 December 2011. He was married to Gayle Simon, of Rochester, N.Y., on 2 June 1957. They raised four daughters.

Organization of the Papers

This series contains Ader’s correspondence with individual persons. Correspondence regarding conferences, grant applications or publications are filed in those series. The Ader correspondence includes carbon or photocopies of Ader’s letters, printouts of e-mails, and the originals of correspondence received. The series is arranged alphabetically by correspondents’ surnames. Individuals with whom Ader conducted more extensive correspondence are accorded individual folders.

This series contains materials that reflect Ader’s involvement in professional societies (including conferences); correspondence with publishers and other corporations; contact with foundations (apart from the material in the grant application series); invitations to be a guest lecturer or visiting professor; and all the material retained in his files that pertain to the University of Rochester, the Medical Center, and the Dept. of Psychiatry (Boxes 25-28). Of particular interest among Ader’s Rochester files are those pertaining to the Center for Psychoneuroimmunology Research (Box 26).

Ader’s influence nationally and internationally is amply evidenced in this series, which includes extensive files for such entities as the American Psychosomatic Society (Boxes 12-13), the International Society for Developmental Psychobiology (Box 17), the Psychoneuroimmunology Research Society [PNIRS] (Boxes 20-24), the conferences in Pittsburgh, Rochester, N.Y., and Columbus, O. that led to the formation of PNIRS (Boxes 19 & 24), etc., etc.

The files in this series are arranged alphabetically by each organization’s name, and chronologically within each organization.

Ader was known for the meticulousness of his research, which lent such authority to the controversial ideas he proposed. The series contains what is probably a complete set of Ader’s grant applications from 1972 to 2006, and is essential to understanding the direction of Ader’s work for more than thirty years. The files include the applications, correspondence regarding the application, renewals, and related documents. This series is arranged chronologically by date of the intitial application.

This series represents what is probably the complete history of Ader’s publishing record. Boxes 37-42 contain files for each journal article, book review or letter to the editor Ader published in the periodical literature. Boxes 43-46 contain files for each book chapter or introduction to a book authored by Ader. The publication series is arranged chronologically by date of publication. Many files contain simply a reprint. Others may include a reprint, the original typescript, page proofs, orcorrespondence with publishers or colleagues.

The three boxes in this final series contain material not easily categorized elsewhere. Ader’s ideas regarding the influence of the brain on the immune system received extensive publicity outside academe. Box 47 contains correspondence (largely with non-academics) regarding his ideas and their implications, as well as articles on psychoneuroimmunology that appeared in the popular press, on television and on radio. Box 48 contains talks delivered by Ader from the early 1970s to the end of the century. Box 49 contains letters of recommendation and external grant reviews, and has been closed to public review until the year 2030.

Folder 6: “Social factors affecting emotionality and resistance to disease in animals: I. Age of separation from the mother and susceptibility to gastric ulcers in the rat” (1960)

Folder 7: “Social factors affecting emotionality and resistance to disease in animals: II. Susceptibility to gastric ulceration as a function of interruptions in social interactions and the time at which they occur” (1960)